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Dessert

Bread Dough Cake

A sweet cake made from bread sponge, eggs, spices, butter, sugar, molasses, raisins, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Dough Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the bread sponge, eggs, mixed spices, butter, sugar, molasses, raisins, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Mix well and add flour until the dough thickens.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 1½ hours.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Bake the cake in the preheated oven until done.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread sponge
Ferments and leavens the dough, giving the cake a yeasted, airy structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added only until the dough thickens. Too much flour makes the cake dense and dry, because gluten and starch build structure that the sponge and fats were balancing.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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